Former FMF Interns Senior Civic Engagement Project...

I feel like I have been really neglectful in continuing my blogging with FMF. This is mostly because I have been working on my capstone civic engagement project all semester. Now that I have finished, I am in the process of writing my field guide and I wanted to share my experience here.

Basically I organized an event where three unfamiliar organizations; Tri-Iota, Alpha Delta Pi, and the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, worked together. These organizations donated jewelry; bracelets, anklets, necklaces, etc. Then I held a jewelry sale in our student center, all proceeds went to The Fistula Foundation.

I chose this foundation after I began to understand the international dilemma surrounding obstetric fistula. The World Health Organization estimates that there are over two million women suffering from fistula. Most often to occur after neglected child birth; fistula is a hole that forms between the vagina and the bladder.

To break down my project from beginning to end, it is important to firstly mention what sprouted my brain storming. This summer while interning in the D.C. FMF office, Alison Shigo of Engel Entertainment held a showing of their documentary, A Walk to Beautiful. The film follows the lives of five women in Ethiopia suffering from obstetric fistula.

This film touched me and I was immediately drawn to this global issue that is close to unheard of in the confines of our own country. There has not been an open fistula hospital in the United States since 1875, this fact amazed me. How can something that two million women are suffering from worldwide, not even be heard of in the U.S.A.? Before this film, I had never heard of fistula, I figured that many people at my university had not either. Therefore, my plan began with the idea of incorporating this film, The Fistula Foundation, and my campus.

In March at the National Young Women’s Leadership Conference, while brainstorming during a campus organizing round table I heard a suggestion that stuck with me. Collaborating an FMLA with a sorority, having the groups donate their jewelry, and selling it, so all proceeds go to a foundation of their choice.

This idea stuck with me, it not only raised money, but also enhanced campus involvement within sometimes unrelated groups, and would create dialogue about an issue. When I began solidifying my ideas for my capstone, I immediately referred back to my experience at the D.C. conference and got in contact with our Alpha Delta Pi sorority to collaborate with FMLA and Tri-Iota.

This is an issue running rampant in countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, the District Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Fistula is the result of many other issues like child marriage, poverty and rape. Women in the U.S. are virtually worry free of fistula, making the necessary procedures to share this courtesy with women internationally a must.

My goal for my project was to raise $200.00 and bring together organizations to raise awareness. I ended up raising $240.00 and creating various dialogues about obstetric fistula. Through using various forms of media, I organized this event that involved unfamiliar groups. Now, these three groups may use each other as alternative resources and continue to help their networks grow at ETSU. Not to mention, educating those who had no prior knowledge of obstetric fistula.

Guest Post: Women on Medicaid Are Being Forgotten in Stupak Outrage

Guest post by Danine Spencer. Originally posted at danine.net.

On Saturday night, my joy and relief at the health care reform bill being passed in the House of Representatives was quickly wiped out by the fury being expressed on Twitter and elsewhere by feminists and progressives over the Stupak amendment. According to the Feminist Majority Foundation, the amendment “bans abortion coverage even if women pay for it with their own money in the public option or private plans in the insurance exchange.”

This is obviously a big deal. In a press release, FMF’s president Ellie Smeal said:

“Millions of poor and middle class women will be denied abortion coverage. Millions more may lose abortion coverage because currently some 85% of private plans now have such coverage.”

I agree the Stupak amendment is terribly, terribly wrong. It is, as Ms. Smeal said, “an unacceptable, giant step backward for women.” Still, abortion cannot be allowed to derail health care reform. This is far too important to me and millions of other women – and men. Health care reform is about life and death. Out-of-control premiums and medical bills are forcing families to choose between buying groceries for their kids, paying the mortgage or obtaining life-saving medical treatment and prescription drugs.

Health care reform is not about abortion. Bart Stupak and the other “pro-life” members of Congress should be ashamed of themselves for hijacking what may be the most important piece of legislation of our time. This is truly a matter of life and death.

Abortion cannot be allowed to derail health care reform. Still, there is another issue that has been overlooked in the outrage over the Stupak amendment. According to the Kaiser Foundation, 9.5 million women are currently on Medicaid. The federal standard for Medicaid requires abortion coverage only in situations where the mother’s life is in danger or in the case of rape or incest. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia only provide this level of coverage while seventeen states exceed federal requirements, funding “all or most medically necessary abortions”.

If abortion doesn’t derail the bill and we actually get health care reform passed, Medicaid’s ranks will expand to include 150% of the Federal Poverty Level, including millions more women.

What about poor women? Don’t we deserve abortion coverage as part of our reproductive rights? Where is the outrage for us? It seems like the feminist movement has simply forgotten about the poorest and sickest of women, those who are most likely to be in need of abortion services. Indeed, many women enroll in Medicaid because they are pregnant and uninsured. Our society has created a safety net for low-income women when they get pregnant but that safety net is full of knots and hard to break free of.

Medicaid’s income limits keep women mired in poverty. StateHealthFacts.org reports that 52.3% of non-elderly families receiving Medicaid have at least one full-time worker, which means that worker is working full-time but doesn’t have health insurance through their job. In order to keep their Medicaid, they cannot earn more than the FPL eligibility limits for their state. If they do earn more than the limits, they risk losing their health insurance.

Furthermore, 47.8% of the non-elderly on Medicaid work part-time or not at all. These people are not eligible for employer-sponsored plans and will probably be unable to afford any plans in the new insurance exchange. They will be stuck on Medicaid. Without abortion coverage.

It has been extremely frustrating and infuriating to watch the uproar over the Stupak amendment. It feels like the feminist movement has forgotten about the poor, sick and disabled women who are on Medicaid and only have access to abortion services under the Hyde Amendment.

Those of us on Medicaid deserve the same reproductive rights that everyone else is entitled to. We are not second-class citizens. We’re women.

Breast Cancer: Not Just the Problem of Rich Countries Anymore

Whenever I see fundraisers for breast cancer, like breast cancer walks and "Buy Pink" products, I tend to get a little case of "fundraiser jealousy". For much of my undergraduate degree, I've studied extreme poverty, and the diseases, humans rights violations, and the opportunity deprivations associated with it.

Preventable diseases--like malaria and dysentry--are some of the biggest killers in Developing nations [a term which some scholars dispute because it implies that those countries are, in fact, developing, instead of the more accurate portrayal that they are being mired deeper in poverty].

Maternal Death claims approximately 536,00 women a year (99 percent of which occur in Developing nations), and most of the deaths are also completely preventable. (And of course, this number doesn't include the annual70,000 unsafe abortion deaths that mainly result from the criminalization of abortion.) I thought about breast cancer as a "rich nation's disease," and begrudginly glared at "pink products" wondering if they were made in sweatshops that expose women to dangerous cancer-causing chemicals.

Recent studies, however, show that breast cancer is on the rise in developing nations (my first thoughts: That means their life expectancies are increasing to the point that they can get old enough to develop breast cancer!)--and that breast cancer affects women in developing nations about 10 years earlier than in industrialized nations (Shoot! I guess not. *runs in corner and cries.* )

What makes matters worse is that approximately two thirds of women are not diagnosed until the cancer has spread. Apparently there's a stigma attached to breast cancer; women are reluctant to get tested because they fear that if they lost a breast, their husband would leave them--which would force them into a situation of deeper poverty. (If that sounds like a nasty thing that could only happen "somewhere else," I'm afraid I have to refer you to Salon.com's article Sex without Nipples in which that theory is sorely refuted.) Estimates say that developing countries will experience a 36 percent increase in breast cancer by 2020, and that 55 percent of the world's expected breast cancer deaths this year will occur in developing countries.

So. Turns out breast cancer is not just a "Rich Nation's problem." My personal misguided theories are hereby flung out the window, and maybe my fundraising jealousy will subside. Talks are even beginning about starting an international task force that will develop methods to detect breast cancer earlier (through training midwives to detect breast cancer) and negotiate lower prices for generic chemotherapy. Whether or not these efforts meet with success is testy--they're sure to meet with opposition from governments, currently installed health professionals who have biases against midwives, and cultural norms.

Whether or not the cure for breast cancer, once discovered, would be shared with women in developing countries is a question we'll have to face once we get there. Considering our record in helping out developing nations with their preventable deaths, however, I'm not too optimistic.

Photo Credit: The Mayor of Worldwide Breast Cancer on flickr.com

Global Economic Downturn Fuels Child Sex Trade

Poverty leads to vulnerability leads to child sexual exploitation--its not a direct correlation or a direct equation, but most studies would agree that those facing poverty are at a much higher risk for sexual exploitation.

With the Global Economic Recession, more people have been pushed into poverty, and more children being sexually exploited. According to the Global Post, approximately 1.8 million children are sexually exploited every year.

Its a pattern familiar to many countries. The recession forced the closure of many work establishments, government services are cut, children have to quit school either because their parents can't afford it or because they have to help earn money, living conditions deteriorate--and as part of these conditions, children become more vulnerable to exploitation. Whether it be through the promise of quick money, the nice words of a stranger, children are increasingly being "recruited" into this multi-billion dollar industry at startling rates every year.

Photo Credit: Yan Pritzker on flickr.com

Surgeon General Nomination

President Obama's administration appears to have found a new surgeon general in the woman the New York Times called the "angel in a white coat." Dr. Regina Benjamin, who became widely known as the travelling savior of the rural poor in Alabama, treated victims of both hurricanes and crippling poverty in the town of Bayou le Batre; she has also become Presiden't Obama's choice for Surgeon General, a decision to be announced later today.

It would take a lot of effort not to be awed by Dr. Benjamin's accomplishments. She began her career working on behalf of people often relegated to the margins, poor patients in extremely remote areas of Gulf Coast Alabama who could often pay little to nothing for her services. Yet even when she rose to national recognition, becoming the first black woman to be elected as the President of the Alabama Medical Association in 2002, she continued to pursue her work. In September she received the $500,000 "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation to rebuild her clinic after it burned down; the clinic had just months earlier been rebuilt after being destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Structural poverty traps, devastating hurricanes, and lack of funding have all conspired to create what should have been a hopeless situation, and yet Dr. Benjamin managed to find a model for providing healthcare in an extraordinary circumstance. With a troubled economy and a bankrupt healthcare system, the US today is facing a unique health challenge; I can't imagine anyone better suited to the job of facing this challenge. Congratulations to Dr. Regina Benjamin, and here's to a speedy confirmation.

Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation, www.macfound.org

Women and the City

Being an Urban Studies and Women's Studies major, the way that these two disciplines interact out in the real world is something that I am always aware of. Poverty is one such issue where these two areas of study overlap. Much has been written about the rise of urban poverty over the last 60 years. However, it has mostly been written from the male perspective. This viewpoint excludes the unique experiences of women who have to juggle poverty with tending a possible family they might have, trying to find work, and encountering the many barriers that come along with not only being poor, but also being a woman.

With the rise in female poverty and women in female-headed households with no spouse experiencing higher rates of poverty at 24.4%, the need for a female perspective is more than evident. Finally, this trend is changing. With new publications that include a female voice in the history of urban poverty, such as Dr. Lisa Levenstein's book A Movement Without Marches, women's experiences and struggles are now being reintroduced into the history of urban poverty.

By rewriting and including women in the dialogue of urban poverty and it's history, effects of this can be seen through many cities new policies and approaches to reducing poverty levels. Places all over the world, including the United States, are starting to follow the idea that by uplifting women in urban centers through promoting gender equity and equality, making education universally available and meeting reproductive health needs, that it can help alleviate many of the factors that lead to rises in poverty. With the Obama administration, they have begun revamp and increase the amount of Small Business Administration programs that provide capital to women-owned businesses.

Women are finally being recognized as an integral part of the way cities function and are being seen as a solution to some of the issues that are a part of cities. This recognition is not only a bright sign for the future of cities and the alleviation of poverty, but is a huge step in getting the female voice in all aspects of social, political, and economic life that has been missing.